What Happened in the Shooting?

A US Marine Veteran being suspected with mental health issues killed at least 12 people in a country bar in Thousand Oaks, California. The shooting began at 11:20 p.m. local time. In reports, there were at least 200 people in the country bar, Borderline Bar and Grill. The bar was hosting a student line-dancing night.

Officials said that the gunman was dressed in black. He forced his way inside the bar after shooting the bouncer. The country music night was about to begin when the suspect threw a smoke grenade before he open fired.

The police said that the suspect used a legally owned .45 caliber Glock that had an illegally extended magazine.

People who were in the event escaped the bar using chairs to break the windows, and others took shelter inside the bar’s toilets. At least ten people were known to be wounded, and others were self-reporting with injuries at local hospitals.

Geoff Dean, the Ventura County Sheriff, described what happened inside the bar as “horrific” and said that there was “blood everywhere.” Moreover, he also said that the first responders arrived less than three minutes after the first emergency calls from the venue.

Along with the 12 victims who died was a police officer. Ventura Sheriff’s Sergeant Ron Helus later died in the hospital. He tried to enter the active scene with a local highway patrolman when he was shot several times.

Who was the Suspect?

Unfortunately, the suspect was a US Marine Veteran. Officials named the suspect 28-year-old Ian David Long. Earlier this year, police mental health professionals cleared him after he was found behaving “irrationally” at his home.

Ian David Long was a corporal in the Marines from August 2008 to March 2013, according to Defense Department records. He went to Afghanistan from November 2010 to June 2011.

Pastor Thomas Burke, who served with Long in the same US Marine Corps regiment, said that Long’s battalion arrived during intense fighting in Helmand province. However, Burke was warned too quickly against blaming Long’s actions on trauma experienced during the war.

Burke said,

“PTSD doesn’t create homicidal ideation. We train a generation to be as violent as possible, then we expect them to come home and be OK. It’s not mental illness. It’s that we’re doing something to a generation, and we’re not responding to the needs they have.”

Ian David Long posted information about his military service on a Special Forces forum called ShadowSpear in March 2017.

Under the name “doorkicker03,” Long said he was an infantry machine gunner while in the Marine Corps for 4½ years and was an instructor in Okinawa in Japan.